He now finds himself standing in it.

Yesterday, the Courier-Mail revealed the existence of LNP “dirt files” on 49 Labor MPs, including MPs. The party machine had paid a former Labor staffer, Robert Hough, $3075 to compile rumours and gossip about ALP MPs’ drinking habits and alleged sexual peccadilloes.

Can Do Campbell, of course, disclaims any knowledge.

And the LNP machine is doing its headless chook impression, unclear as to whether the files have actually been shredded. That seems moot, as for reasons which are rather unclear (aside from selling papers), the Courier-Mail has published them all in today’s print edition.

We’re drowning in polls at the moment, and rumours of polls.

I’ve been writing in recent days about the futility of over-interpreting polls, and it’s also been suggested that the key to divining this election may lie in ancient Etruscan wisdom.

Yet, there is some worth in reporting from on the ground. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the contests in Queensland, and what follows is a poll-free guide to what’s going down. It’s not a prediction, mind.

A few general points are in order before getting down to the seat level.

Labor’s problems in Queensland — which are real — do have quite a bit to do with Kevin Rudd’s demise and the unpopularity of the Bligh state government. But not quite in the way usually discussed.

It’s more that the removal of Rudd reinforced perceptions of a self-serving and cynical Labor Party, looking for the electoral fix rather than the policy vision. Anna Bligh’s woes are about trust, not so much about the service delivery or government instability factors so important in New South Wales.

Secondly, some chickens are coming home to roost. Labor won in Queensland at state level in 2006 and federally in 2007 on the back of the promise that health and infrastructure could be fixed if only the partisan planets came into alignment. So part of the state parochialism factor is raised expectations from having Queenslanders as Prime Minister and Treasurer. There is a strong view that no one from Melbourne can understand the joint, and Peter Beattie used to get a lot of mileage from blaming southerners for population pressure.

Thirdly, Queensland is not Western Sydney. The age of Hansonism is past, and asylum seekers and immigration are not as salient in Brisbane’s suburbs. Making Sydney the centre of the political universe resonates with Rudd’s warning about the NSW-ification of the Labor party.

And there is a fair bit of residual affection for Rudd.

Having said all that, the government’s campaign in Queensland is being well run, and Wayne Swan’s local smarts are a big factor in that. The pitch to the marginals is a good one, and in many instances, the LNP is greatly hampered by poor candidate selection. This goes back to the time when Labor looked unbeatable, and some of the more promising up and comers decided to wait until the LNP’s “grandfather” provisions expired and sitting members could be challenged — in 2013.

So, to the seats.

At this stage Labor is poised to hold Brisbane, Bonner, Flynn, Longman and Petrie.

The huge central Queensland seat of Flynn is the most likely of these four to fall.

The wunderkind of the LNP, 20-year-old Wyatt Roy, isn’t favoured to take Longman where former state MP and incumbent Jon Sullivan is a canny campaigner, although the Longman MP may have done himself some damage with a gaffe about the medical treatment of children with disabilities last night, depending on how widely his remarks are reported.

Dawson, Herbert and Leichardt are toss ups, though I’d anticipate Labor winning at least one of these regional seats. Whatever Peter Beattie might think, the ALP could have done with a better candidate than former Townsville mayor Tony Mooney in Herbert.

Peter Dutton is set to hold Dickson, nominally a Labor seat, after looking a bit shaky in the first couple of weeks of the campaign. Andrew Laming will also hold Bowman for the LNP, despite its extreme marginality, because of Labor disunity related to preselection stoushing, and woes in the campaign. Resources have been pulled out of the Bayside seat.

Forde looks all right for Labor, but its newly created neighbour Wright — a notional LNP seat — might be a surprise, at least being run much closer than expected. The interesting “leafy western suburbs” seat of Ryan, where Michael Johnson was disendorsed by the LNP, could just fall to the ALP. It’s been ripe for picking for some time, and the redistribution has favoured Labor. Johnson’s standing as an independent is a wild card, though he has no chance of winning.

Of great interest too will be the strength of Andrew Bartlett’s vote for the Greens in Brisbane. If he could take it from about 12% to 20% or higher, he’d be doing splendidly. But my impression is that soft Labor voters in my home seat have been swinging back over the past couple of weeks. Despite some excitable commentary, Brisbane is nothing like Melbourne or Grayndler. The closest approximation to a Southern “inner-city lefty” seat is actually Rudd’s seat of Griffith, which he will easily hold. In Brisbane, the ‘burbs begin about five minutes’ drive from the CBD.

Whether or not Larissa Waters can break through into the Senate for the Greens is another intriguing question, but I wouldn’t put a bet on it.

To sum up, my feeling is that Labor will lose between three and six seats it holds or nominally holds. I suspect it’ll be about four or five, including Dickson and Herbert, one or both of Flynn and Dawson and perhaps Leichardt. All of these are regional seats, bar Dickson. I wouldn’t rule out one other Brisbane seat falling too, perhaps Forde or Bonner. But the worst case scenario of eight or nine is possible, if, I think, highly unlikely. If pressed, I’d plump for five Labor losses, though there’s a lot of fluidity and unevenness in the vote.

Labor’s good at closing in Queensland, and if the direct mail is working, I wouldn’t be surprised if fewer than five seats go.

If Labor can snatch Ryan (possible) or Wright (unlikely), then the equation for the net contribution of Queensland to the national ALP column changes. If there are any LNP gains higher up the pendulum, look to Moreton and Blair, though I think both are very long shots.

Overall, though, I don’t think the swing against Labor in Queensland will be sufficient to be a cause in and of itself of a national defeat. Sad as it is for a Queenslander to say, Labor’s chances of picking up seats in South Australia and Victoria and the picture in NSW are probably the key to that puzzle, if I’m right.

But it has been interesting to see more observers come around to what I’ve been saying for just over a fortnight — Labor has contained the swing against it in Queensland.

Queensland’s 150th budget is much like the 149th that came before it. It is a carefully crafted grab-bag of token initiatives, old solutions and outright bribes that paper over the economic cracks but do little to address the State’s longer term needs: how to move to a 21st century economy as the population grows daily older. It will take a government with a lot more vision than the cautious Anna Bligh/Andrew Fraser to deliver on that promise. Such a government is nowhere in waiting in Queensland, however.

Monday saw the release of a Galaxy Poll which further reinforced the plight Queensland Labor finds itself in. Anna Bligh’s dissatisfaction level is now 69%, and in an echo of recent federal polls, The Greens’ primary has surged to 16%, which is a stunning figure for them in a state where their vote has never been as strong as elsewhere. The 2PP figure, because of the pollster’s method of allocating preferences, actually improves for Labor, but this is deeply misleading, as optional preferential and a culture of ‘Just Vote One’ lead to a high exhaustion rate, making many seats effectively first past the post contests.

The poll found 85% opposing Bligh’s asset sales. Labor had been hoping for a circuit breaker with ructions and defections from the LNP, but all their hopes look likely to be in vain until and unless something is done about either the privatisations and/or the party’s leadership. Neither is likely, so we’re still looking at the first conservative government in Queensland since 1998.

The two MPs, both former Nationals, have talked up an alliance with the other three Independents in State Parliament, and McLindon dubbed the state election “Independence Day”.

The defection reflects continuing dissension in the ranks of the amalgamated party, and the divisions between former Liberals (including the many who didn’t join the new party) and Nationals. In Kevin Rudd’s home state, the fractious LNP still poses a real problem for the federal campaign.

At state level, the MPs’ action is poised to capitalise on electoral sentiment disgusted by a long term and increasingly unpopular Labor government and unenthusiastic about the lacklustre opposition.

I

The Bligh government’s decision to privatise a range of public assets, most significantly Queensland Rail, certainly requires explanation. It’s politically irrational, and as John Quiggin argues, the economic case for privatisation has no merit. Most observers of the 2009 Queensland election campaign concur that Labor’s victory was secured only in a few short days before polling day itself; in part because electors started to focus on the real prospect of a Lawrence Springborg led LNP government, but importantly also because Labor ran a more activist campaign than could have been anticipated – highlighting the need to preserve public sector jobs, and standing up to credit ratings agency in favour of an economic growth agenda to protect Queensland jobs and workers’ standards of living. Debt and deficit scares were pushed aside in the midst of the GFC.

Yet, a few short months later, with no advance warning or consultation, Anna Bligh and Treasurer Andrew Fraser dropped the privatisation bombshell. The polls essentially haven’t moved since, and the public trust that Anna Bligh herself had created collapsed almost instantaneously. Though the LNP opposition led by John-Paul Langbroek is hardly a convincing alternative government, they’ve looked ever since like they have a very smooth path to victory at the next election.

So, the political rationality of this push stands in question, and particularly so given that obvious compromises to reverse part of the privatisation have not been made. Though you can hardly walk up George Street without hearing rumours of coups against Bligh, it appears clear that it is now very unlikely that there will be any backdown, despite a very prominent and active community and union campaign (led by the ETU, in particular).

Labor faces a large defection of support – notably in the suburbs and regions – to the LNP, and a probably slightly smaller swing in inner city seats direct to The Greens. The optional preferential voting system, and the habit inculcated by years of ‘Just Vote One’ campaigning by Peter Beattie in the face of conservative disunity, make it likely that many electors will vote for The Greens, then walk out of the polling booth in disgust, without giving Labor a preference. The ALP’s rational political strategy would be to reverse at least the privatisation of QR, and make a turn to the left, but this almost certainly won’t happen. Rather all the government can offer – including to its own backbenchers – is a strategy of toughing out public criticism and hoping it will all be forgotten before we next go to the polls.

II

A number of possible explanations can be advanced for the privatisation craze. One would be in terms of the factional and political dynamics within the Labor party and caucus, the elimination of any real independent powerbases in Cabinet, the group around Bligh, and the relations between the ALP, the Labour Movement, and the community. Another would be the influence of local business, economists, bureaucrats in Treasury and the Premier’s Department, and the inter-relationship of a resources economy and global flows of investment, exports and capital.

As others will be focusing on these aspects of the privatisation push, I’ve chosen to look at the decision more in the light of longer term structural factors – particularly the influence of the twin forces of globalisation and the centralisation of state power in Australia, and the exhaustion of both Queensland Labor political culture and the New Labor style of state governance and politics. For me, the most important question, which I think could only be answered by Bligh and her crew in sound bite speak, would be what exactly the purpose of the Queensland Labor party is.

III

It’s not as widely known as it should be that, far from being the red neck state of Joh era mythos, Queensland has a very radical past. The work of writers such as Carole Ferrier and historians such as Ray Evans, and in particular their co-edited book Radical Brisbane and Evans’ History of Queensland, documents a continuing tradition of radicalism. Queensland saw the first Labor government in the world, Brisbane experienced a General Strike in 1912, T. J. Ryan was the only leader in the British Empire to oppose Conscription in 1916 and 1917. This state was the first in Australia to have free public hospitals, women’s activism dates back to the 1870s, and even the dispute which brought down the Gair government in the Split of 1957 was over a substantive issue of the extension of workers’ rights.

Space prevents me from developing this argument in full, but my contention would be that the Queensland Labor tradition was a far more properly democratic socialist one than the experience of NSW Labor, for instance, an obvious comparator.

IV

So, where does the State Labor government stand today?

It’s simplifying things a bit, of course, but it seems to me that Labor does three things in government:

(a) Acts as cheerleader for and enabler of fractions of local and global capital; from the ever present developers to international coal. Little attempt is made to question the virtue of development in general, or specific developments in particular – including those which will do much harm to the government’s purported climate change abatement strategy. Anna Bligh appears captive and supine in the face of business interests, caught up in a spiral of zero sum competition with other Premiers, reliant on a drip feed of donations and jobs from resources industries and others to implement her ostensible economic aims;

(b) Plays to the worst in the communitarian New Labor text book; using “nudge” ideas to govern the soul, to shape our behaviour in the face of risks perceived or beaten up by the Sunday Mail or talkback radio. There’s a puritan element to Labor administration, which runs directly counter to a Left tradition I’d like to see revived; that of enhancing and facilitating the ability of citizens to develop autonomous capacities for self government and for using leisure time for self development and other directed activity in the family, friendship networks and local and wider communities.

Struggles over working time – to free the capacities of citizens through both greater leisure and a high standard of employment rights – have been displaced by a narrow economism which celebrates jobs and growth for their own sake.

(c) Ducks for cover when anything goes wrong in the services the state still has responsibility for delivering to its citizens. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen Ministers on the ABC tv news throw up their hands and say “but the Department didn’t tell me!”.

IV

Much of this futile activity, shaped by a now well established set of political tactics (“Labor has a plan!”, “Jobs, jobs, jobs!”, etc), takes place in a context where state governments have little power to stucture really distinctive outcomes outside service delivery. Even ten years ago, let alone fifty or a hundred, their influence was much greater. For example, the pay equity reforms, on which I worked as a consultant in 2000, held out the possibility of a real reconfiguration not just of conditions but also of social relations in a gendered workforce. And the Beattie government, perhaps suffused in something of a nostalgic glow now that we know what came next, pioneered an industry policy agenda based around human capital and endogenous growth theory, emblazoned as ‘The Smart State’. Much of this strategy, though continuing to influence the thinking of Rudd Labor, and Wayne Swan in particular, was dismantled by the Bligh regime.

Peter Beattie also understood, in resisting the push from powerful quarters for the privatisation of QR, that jobs were worth more to individuals, families and communities than a matter of mere calculation. There’s no question that he was right to be sceptical of PPPs, and to reject privatisation and the attack on working conditions and jobs which will follow in its wake. He had some awareness of both the dignity of labour, and the way in which public economic power could be leveraged for social purposes.

The Queensland government now stands empty of promise, displaying an inability to unify its areas of residual responsibility with any theme other than anodyne slogans, often ones imported – via the temporary return of Mike Kaiser – from a strategy which supposedly reinvigorated NSW Labor. We all know how that turned out.

And in its own domain, decades of managerialism have ensconced a drive for constant re-organisation in the public sector, a make work culture of reports on reports and the cult of the Excel spreadsheet, where productive activity is secondary to the reduction of all of us to worker bees in the public part of the capitalist hive, dreaming only of a credit card driven escape. Corporatisation and managerialism pave the road to privatisation, and the attendant adoption of a narrow balance sheet mentality (seen also by the fixation on numbers – numbers of jobs, billions of export dollars) which is what passes for thinking among some Ministers.

Purpose is lost.

V

Much could also be said, and will be said by others today, of the significance of global flows of investment, capital and exports. I’d prefer to emphasise, though, the sociological force of homogenisation as a globalising factor. Queensland becomes more like everywhere else, content, or apparently content to feed on the scraps of the resources buck; an increasingly deracinated and featureless landscape.

This homogenisation, which is also a social force, has huge implications for the evisceration of tradition and any vision of an alternative future; any ability to conceive of something different which blends the best of the old and the new. Another world is possible, but not here.

VI

So, too, we see homogenisation in politics. One State Labor government is much like another. Queensland’s distinctive culture is lost, and no real vision advanced of a future for its citizens which would be both transformational and liberatory. The irony of the late arrival of the privatisation push in the Sunshine State is that it’s a reflex of the dying New Labor beast – as if the government were saying, we’ve done everything else except privatise. Decades on from Thatcher and the first throes of neo-liberalism, it’s a perverse form of modernisation, in a register heavily ironic. To privatise is what New Labor governments do, so let’s do it!

Here, if we had more time, we could focus more on the precise trajectory by which the links with past left tradition, with the labour movement and with public culture have become attenuated; the particular pattern where a governing impetus becomes deformed into the routine action of a political class, with all its connections into finance capital, and resources capital.

But, the central contention for me is that Queensland Labor has forgotten what it’s for. I doubt, I’d reiterate, that anyone in Cabinet really knows, beyond their own dreams of endless power. It’s this evisceration of purpose, driven by the diminution of responsibility and the globalisation of the same, which really explains the privatisation push. Ideology, stripped of ideas and a social purpose, reveals itself as irrationality, venality and stupidity.

VII

So, what is to be done?

For me, one of the greatest irony in a litany thereof, was Anna Bligh’s supposedly knock down argument, delivered as part of her half-hearted defence of the privatisations, that it may have been appropriate for Labor to run State Hotels and Butcher’s Shops in the 1920s, but not in 2010. I’m not defending State Hotels per se, though perhaps they might stay open longer than Bligh’s wowserish desire to ensure that we can’t enjoy a drink because we can’t be trusted to do so implies. But there’s a significance in the trashing of the Queensland Labor tradition by its current leader which goes to a total failure of purpose and imagination, and a failure to see that public purposes have a role to play in socialising the benefits of economic life.

What we need now, I’d contend, is to start to reimagine what our forebears saw as the purpose of state government; to extend to the citizens the fruits of their labours, and to develop capacities for personal, civic and communal action beyond the narrow repetition of the same which is work in late capitalism. We need to start thinking of what public services are for, what democratic management of enterprise means, and what we can do, collectively, to both articulate and realise a dream of a more socially just and sustainable State.

In the wake of the GFC, and the exhaustion of neo-liberalism whose parallel is to be seen in the exhaustion of Labor’s purpose, I feel hopeful that we can actually begin to articulate such an agenda, and begin to dream big dreams again.

Elsewhere: John Quiggin’s talk at the same event.

Previous discussion on LP here.

Possum has obtained the polling conducted by UMR for six Queensland unions on the impact of Anna Bligh’s privatisation plans on Labor’s vote. It’s not good news for Bligh, and he suggests, not good news for Kevin Rudd either:

These figures suggest that the Bligh government’s asset sale plan will reduce the ALP’s two-party preferred vote share at the federal election in Queensland by up to about 2%. That is a significant impediment to Labor winning and retaining seats in Rudd’s home state.

His conclusion is interesting:

That level of generic political outlook suggests that not all is lost for Bligh. When combined with asset sales being the dominant issue that is chasing votes away from Labor, with the union movement agitating for the program to be overturned and with Bligh’s program spilling political consequences across into the federal election sphere?—?the option of a back flip with a triple pike on the asset sale program must be filling the minds of Labor politicians everywhere.

I suspect that the polling doesn’t properly disaggregate the influences of the actual privatisation decision and the perception that Bligh did an almighty turnaround from her election rhetoric, because the choice between the two options is not a particularly salient one given that they’re inter-related. So a backflip would undoubtedly be good for Rudd (or a bit of old-fashioned distancing, as he did with Peter Beattie’s unpopular council amalgamations). But I suspect the jury is still out as to whether Bligh could turn around her fortunes. Given that she’s not the most flexible politician in the world when it comes to changing course, a new Premier might be the answer for Queensland state Labor.

I’ve been teaching at tertiary level for over a decade, I’ve taught Education students, and I’ve got family and friends who are or have been teachers. I don’t think I’d feel at all confident about going into a classroom after six weeks with a PhD as well as a few other degrees! – I’d be very well aware that I know little about child psychology and development, or classroom and behaviour management, let alone bearing the very weighty responsibilities for students’ well being and health and safety. I doubt all that could be taught in six weeks, and I doubt that you can learn it effectively through some sort of apprenticeship model, no matter how many ‘guides’ and ‘mentors’ you have.

University faculties, to my certain knowledge, already have great difficulty placing students on prac because of the additional workload on their classroom teachers, and stories about the difficulties involved are legion from teachers, academic supervisors and education students.

I believe there’s been no evaluation of the Victorian programme yet, and it’s not hard to see this as a simplistic twist on the movie fantasy of idealistic teacher saves poor kids’ lives script. The reality is that, no matter how idealistic, beginning graduate teachers have a high propensity to leave the profession in their initial years, because they’re already not adequately supported. Similarly, what disadvantaged schools need is stability, experience and professional skills in the workforce, and the fact that’s hard to secure is probably the real justification for Anna Bligh’s consideration of this policy.

How this all meshes in with Bligh’s overall goal of more rigorous teacher registration and qualifications is also a question still to be answered.

As well as insulting the professionalism of teachers, this also cynically cheapens the idealism of those who might be attracted to the programme in the cause of saving Bligh’s electoral skin. It’s particularly depressing because her earlier contribution to school education in Queensland, though susceptible to a range of legitimate criticisms, was the outstanding contribution she’d made as a Minister.

While the election is a long time away, Labor’s polling has been appalling since very shortly after Anna Bligh’s government was returned, with the vastly unpopular privatisations being accurately seen as a symbol of a fundamental loss of public trust in state Labor. To return to a position where they’re even competitive would probably require both a new leader and a reversal of the asset sales decision.

The Greens’ primary vote should be very encouraging for them – it’s very high in the Queensland context, and a lot of it would be concentrated in marginal Brisbane and coastal Labor seats. I would imagine that a lot of Labor’s primary has moved straight over to the LNP, and that The Greens’ increase in support is probably coming from the more ideologically committed segment of the ALP vote. With the primary vote all important in Queensland, the rational move for the ALP if it were to pursue a save the furniture strategy would be to go to the left to rebuild its primary and maximise preference flow. Don’t hold your breath, though. We’re more likely to see more hard hat bluster.

Anna Bligh’s credibility was one of the few things the ALP had going for it in the March state election. Her opposition to the dictates of ratings agencies was a hallmark message. The announcement after Labor squeaked back in that the fuel subsidy would go, that public sector wages would effectively be frozen and jobs disappeared through efficiency dividends, and, particularly, the plans for the sell off of state assets have seen the trust the electorate had in Bligh collapse.

I also wrote, commenting on her efforts to turn the situation around:

But the public aren’t inclined to credit her for decisive action — because the basis of trust that existed between citizens and their Premier has already dissipated.

At the time, I was met with some scepticism in comments. At the end of the year, I think it’s pretty clear that Bligh’s regime has the smell of death about it. Anyone who doubts that should have a look at Graham Young’s latest polling [links to posts on quant and qual respectively].

Bligh’s woes have been compounded by the departure of her chief of staff, Mike Kaiser. His replacement, Nicole Scurrah, is something of a policy wonk, and it’s difficult to see any semblance of a political strategy from the (shrinking) Bligh camp, beyond toughing it out and proclaiming the virtues of ‘tough decisions’. Hiring Bernie Fraser on 2 and a half grand a day to pacify the unions was a waste of money, and the partial backdown on the privatisations (now to be 50 and 99 year leases instead of full sales) has not stemmed the tide of public and union anger.

The last month or so has seen serious discussions within the party, caucus and unions about removing Bligh. It’s important to recall here that Bligh has alienated many on the left, both in caucus and in left unions, and also in the faction’s rank and file. There’s a host of intra-factional bad will, which is somewhat tangential to the broader consensus forming that removing Bligh is the only way to give Labor any chance at electoral survival, but which has its own effects.

Monday saw reports of moves to convene a special party conference to reverse the privatisation push. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the machinations going on at the moment, some of which are described in an article by Andrew Crook in today’s Crikey [paywalled].

Crook accurately describes the AWU as key to what happens next, along with left moves to cushion the blow by giving Bligh the exit option of a federal job orchestrated by Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. What we’re seeing is a confluence of very disparate political actors within the ALP attempting to map out a strategy, but united so far only by their determination that Bligh must go. At this stage it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen, but if Bligh is still Premier in February, it will be something of a victory for her.

Crook mentions Attorney-General Cameron Dick as the most likely successor. Dick is, as Crook says, an astute operator, but counting against him is his lack of parliamentary experience (he’s a first term MP), and the fact that his own seat of Greenslopes would be in the firing line of the LNP should Labor’s stocks not recover. There’s long been talk of Speaker John Mickel bringing a reassuring touch of grey to the leadership, and some new speculation that my local member, Grace Grace, might be elevated straight into the top gig. Grace’s potential candidacy is also seen as countering the (accurate) perception that the state’s first female Premier could be removed by being dealt the death blow by a bunch of right wing boys.

All three leadership hopefuls can be presented as not closely associated with Anna Bligh’s regime, and any successful coup, or managed transition, would be conditional on the reversal of the privatisation decision. Deputy Premier Paul Lucas could not be similarly dissociated from the current leadership, but his willingness to shift his numbers in return for holding his spot would make him a crucial determinant of who emerges as Premier.

Peter Beattie is also said to have reversed his support for Bligh, and the glow of nostalgia now surrounding his leadership might make that more significant than it otherwise might have been.

The situation is highly fluid, but the tipping point where Bligh’s leadership is terminal has almost certainly been reached. Watch this space in the New Year.

There has been a certain feeling in the air of deja vu over the past fortnight in Queensland. The jailing of a former Minister, allegations that government was far too close to business, a government sinking rapidly in the polls while making “tough decisions” and, the piece de resistance, the exposure of systemic misconduct in the elite Armed Robbery Squad of the Queensland Police.

The timing of this sequence of supposedly unlikely events was interesting. Much is being made of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Fitzgerald Report. The date falls this Thursday, and Tony Fitzgerald QC himself will be commemorating the occasion with a public lecture at Griffith University.

So is something again rotten in the state of Queensland?

Lurid stories of convicted criminals wining, dining and bonking on dodgy day release jaunts supposedly to gather intelligence for the coppers dominated local press coverage. This a week after revelations of the jailed Gordon Nuttall’s bizarre plans to make himself premier — shades of Russ Hinze perhaps.

The reality, though, is more prosaic.

Premier Anna Bligh claimed that Nuttall’s sentencing and the CMC report into police misconduct were proof that the system was working. A new Queensland would shed light on the malfeasance of a few. A number of voices were raised to accuse Bligh of dangerous complacency.

There’s merit in that claim.

In truth, as veteran civil libertarian lawyer Terry O’Gorman argued, echoed by a chorus of retired judges, the impetus behind the anti-corruption agenda had begun to dissipate long ago. Landmarks were the amalgamation of the Crime Commission and the CJC into the CMC, and the practice of outsourcing inquiries into misconduct back to the departments concerned. The CMC conducts few investigations, and a huge majority of complaints against police are referred back to the QPS’ Ethical Standards Command. The watchers are watching themselves.

The CJC, and it successor, the CMC, have never been popular with pollies. Signs that the Fitzgerald agenda was being watered down go back to the Goss era. The cavalier practice of using the corruption watchdog as a pawn in the political chess game hasn’t helped matters. Nor has, some would suggest, the secrecy surrounding the CMC itself.

Openness and transparency are key to an ethical political — and police — culture. The Bligh government has taken some steps in this direction, but much could still be done. Fitzgerald pointed to the faults of a supine media in his report. In the two decades since, Brisbane’s print landscape has narrowed to one paper, the Courier-Mail, whose tabloidisation is mirrored by the current affairs coverage on ABC Local Radio. The state based 7.30 Report has long gone, and there’s no new Quentin Dempster to put the pollies and coppers under the microscope. Brisbane media over the last fortnight has concentrated on the sensational aspects of the scandalous revelations at the expense of hard-headed analysis and investigative reporting.

That probably won’t change.

So it’s even more important that Bligh and her government ditch the soundbites which appear to come naturally to a government on the ropes and attend to the culture of complacency that has grown up. We don’t need another Fitzgerald Inquiry — things aren’t that bad. But we do need some serious thought and analysis about opening up the Queensland political and police cultures, and about reform of the CMC itself.